Casualties of the Cold War In Scorpion Down, veteran correspondent
Ed Offley claims the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion was sunk in 1968 by
the Soviet Navy.

Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon: The
Untold Story of the USS Scorpion, by Ed Offley, New York: Basic Books,
2007, 482 pages, hardcover, $27.50.

Monday, May 27, 1968 was to be a day of homecoming in Norfolk,
Virginia. Cool temperatures, a lead-gray sky, and occasional torrential
rain couldn't dampen the spirits of wives and families gathered
near Pier 22 at the Norfolk Naval Station that day. Waiting in cars or
in the warmth of a nearby submarine tender, the gathered families waited
in anticipation for the low, black shape of the submarine USS Scorpion
to come into view. As the rain poured down, minutes turned to hours and
still there was no sign of the sleek and deadly nuclear sub.

Finally, word came that the boat and her 99-member crew had been
delayed. In the gloom, nervous families left the dockyard to wait for
notification that the Scorpion had finally returned. It would never
come.

On June 5, Admiral Thomas Moorer, the Chief of Naval Operations,
confirmed for the families of the crew what many had already learned or
feared: the boat was lost. Scorpion and her crew had joined the ranks of
those on "eternal patrol."

The loss of Scorpion set in motion one of modern naval
history's most enduring mysteries. Officially, the reason for her
loss is unknown, though there has been plenty of speculation. Some
believe that a torpedo malfunctioned and began to "run hot" in
the tube, culminating in disaster. Others point to supposed mechanical
failings on board, but no one has been able to tell, for certain,
exactly what sent the sub and her crew to the bottom of the Atlantic
Ocean on her voyage home. Efforts to make sense of her loss have been
hampered by official secrecy that, by many accounts, goes unusually far
beyond even the normal culture of secrecy that keeps the activities of
the Navy's "silent service" behind a protective veil.

What happened to Scorpion? Why the secrecy? If veteran
military-affairs reporter Ed Offley is right, there was ample reason for
military officials to cover up the loss of Scorpion. Based on over two
decades of research and countless interviews with both sailors and top
Navy brass alike, Offley asserts in his provocative new book, Scorpion
Down, that the sleek, fast-attack sub failed to return as scheduled on
May 27, 1968 because she had been attacked and sunk a week earlier by
the Soviet Navy in what can only be termed an act of war.

Like No Other

When she was launched in 1959, the USS Scorpion was a
representative of the most advanced class of nuclear attack submarines
on Earth. Coming only five years after the launch of USS Nautilus, the
world's first nuclear submarine, the Scorpion and her
Skipjack-class counterparts represented a further revolution in
submarine technology. Combining the power and flexibility of nuclear
propulsion with a revolutionary advanced teardrop hull for maximum
hydrodynamic performance, the Skipjack boats, Scorpion included, were at
the time of their launch the fastest and most maneuverable submarines
ever built.

At 252 feet in length, Scorpion's nuclear-powered steam
turbines could propel her through the depths of the ocean at an official
speed of 29 knots, though she was probably significantly faster than
that. Even today, for obvious reasons, the Navy will not disclose the
true performance capabilities of its nuclear submarines.

Her speed and performance were meant for only one purpose: to chase
and sink Soviet submarines in the event of war. Like all U.S. attack
subs, during the Cold War Scorpion found herself on the front lines in
near-combat conditions as the Navy struggled to keep tabs on an ever
more aggressive Soviet presence on and under the world's oceans.
That was the task that faced Scorpion and her crew, under the leadership
of Commander Francis A. Slattery, as the boat deployed to the
Mediterranean in February 1968.

The situation was tense as the boat entered the Med, as Offley
recalls. "The Sixth Fleet flashed a message to the submarine that
the Soviet Navy was confronting U.S. and NATO naval units all over the
Mediterranean." The sub's orders, Offley writes, sent
"the submarine on a top-secret mission that one crewman later
indicated was to spy on Soviet Navy ships near the Straits of
Gibraltar." These missions often involved escorting ballistic
missile submarines (boomers) in order to help them evade the Soviet subs
that tracked them. Sometimes the missions turned dangerous and violent.
One sailor who served aboard a submarine tender in the Med told Offley
that in 1968 at least two American subs were severely damaged after
altercations with Soviet subs. "One included more than half the
sail [conning tower] smashed right down to the deck," Navy veteran
Tom Carlough, who was stationed in Rota, Spain, aboard the sub tender
Canopus, told Offley.

Last Voyage

Despite the danger, Scorpion and her crew finished their
Mediterranean cruise without incident and May 17 found the boat and her
crew preparing to transit the Atlantic back to Norfolk. Sometime during
the early morning hours, though, that plan changed. According to Offley,
"the radio teletypewriter in the Scorpion's radio shack came
chattering to life" with orders diverting the sub "to a point
southwest of the Canary Islands to spy on a group of Soviet Navy ships
that included an Echo-II nuclear cruise missile submarine."

Unbeknownst to its crew, Scorpion was sailing into the jaws of
death. Two breaches of U.S. security, according to Offley, put the sub
and its crew in mortal danger. The first was the capture of the USS
Pueblo by North Korea in January 1968. Operating off the Korean coast,
the Pueblo's mission was to eavesdrop on communist electronic
communications. But the little ship was surrounded by North Korean
patrol boats and captured on January 23. The crew made a gallant attempt
to destroy all sensitive documents and equipment, but were unable to
finish in time and some material, including an important "KW-7
Orestes secure send/receive teletypewriter," fell into communist
hands. According to Offley, that "crypto gear had been rushed to
Moscow for study and possible exploitation by the KGB" just days
after the Pueblo was captured.

The KGB, says Offley, was able to make use of the equipment to
intercept U.S. Naval communications that they were then able to decode
thanks to the treasonous activity of the notorious Walker spy ring.
Unknown to the Navy at the time, "John Walker in early 1968 was
already providing the KGB with a constant stream of keylists, repair
manuals, and technical documents with design improvements for the
Navy's encryption machines." These machines were the same ones
used to communicate with Scorpion. According to Offley, having broken
the U.S. codes, "the Soviets wielded that weapon to set up an
ambush that destroyed the Scorpion and its crew in a secret battle that
climaxed beneath the Atlantic on May 22, 1968."

Smoking Gun

That is a provocative conclusion, but Offley seems to have the
smoking gun to prove it. During the Cold War the United States operated
a secret network of underwater listening posts. Known as the Sound
Surveillance System--SOSUS--it gave the U.S. Navy the ability to hear
almost everything that happened under the Atlantic. If the Soviets did
sink Scorpion, SOSUS would have recorded the battle. According to
Offley, that's exactly what happened.

The smoking gun, Offley says, was revealed in a training class for
new SOSUS operators in 1982. The story comes from Navy SOSUS operator
Vince Collier, who was in the class. According to the story Collier told
to Offley, one day the class instructor entered the room with a SOSUS
training tape. Collier recounted: "From the beginning of the tape
... we were watching these two submarines. We saw 'sprint and
drift,' we saw 'Crazy Ivan,'" he said, referring to
submarine combat maneuvers. Then, Offley writes, recounting the story,
the SOSUS record "clearly showed a torpedo launch from one of the
submarines." According to Collier, the sub dodged the torpedo for a
time, but couldn't escape and the SOSUS record ended with a violent
explosion. "Are we watching an American submarine biting the
bullet?" a student asked, according to Collier. The reply from the
instructor, Ocean Systems Technician First Class Richard Falck:
"This is the death of the USS Scorpion. That was a Russian torpedo
signature. Officially, it's not." When the class was over,
Collier recalled for Offley, he got a look at the container that held
the incriminating SOSUS record. "I looked straight down on the
cover of the tape, and it said 'USS Scorpion.'"

Collier's is an intriguing story and it is contained in an
even more intriguing book. But it's not the only evidence that
Offley cites pointing to a violent encounter between Scorpion and the
Soviet Navy in 1968. The author takes readers on a carefully guided tour
through decades of meticulous research containing illuminating
interviews with nearly everyone involved in Scorpion's final
mission, from sailors like Vince Collier on up through the ranks to top
admirals. Along the way Scorpion Down presents an almost airtight case
that the men aboard Scorpion died in battle in an undeclared war against
a tenacious foe, heroes and victims in a decades-long silent war beneath
the sea.

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